Backing Ferrer, Union Focuses on Teacher Pay

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

Published: October 6, 2001

As the union representing New York City teachers formally endorsed Fernando Ferrer for mayor, its leader sought to portray him yesterday as the candidate who would rebuild Lower Manhattan and make New Yorkers feel safe without abandoning the goal of making teachers' salaries competitive with those in the suburbs.

Randi Weingarten, the union president, harked back to the fiscal crisis of the early 1970's and warned that the impending recession must not have the same devastating impact on the school system.

"Freddy understands that you cannot rebuild New York unless you ensure that our schools work for all our children," Ms. Weingarten said in a news conference at the Manhattan headquarters of the union, the United Federation of Teachers.

But it remains unclear whether the union's 100,000 members who live in New York City will follow Ms. Weingarten's lead and vote for Mr. Ferrer in the runoff on Thursday. After the union endorsed Alan G. Hevesi for the Democratic primary, only 20 percent of teachers voted for Mr. Hevesi, compared with 29 percent for Mr. Ferrer and 32 percent for Mark Green, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls.

In an interview after the news conference, Ms. Weingarten suggested that many of her members did not vote for Mr. Hevesi because the union stopped promoting his candidacy after Sept. 11, the day of the World Trade Center attack. "The members want signals," she said, "and once we didn't give them a signal, in school after school, they voted for whomever they wished to vote for."

One longtime union delegate said yesterday that since this week's meeting for the endorsement vote was scheduled at the last minute, the delegates who ended up attending — only about 500 out of 2,800 — were those closest to the union leadership and most likely to support the candidate Ms. Weingarten favored. Many teachers had hoped the union would remain neutral in the runoff, the delegate said.

Ms. Weingarten said she had seriously considered remaining neutral until after the two Democratic candidates addressed the delegates and Mr. Ferrer was received fervently. "I think it's very fair to say that Freddy Ferrer earned the endorsement of the delegates," she said.

Mr. Ferrer, the Bronx borough president, repeated some of his remarks to the teachers at yesterday's news conference, saying that school reform would remain a top priority. "The minute we abandon our school system, the minute we sacrifice the things we say we believe in, then we've lost a long-term fight for New York," he said.

Yet even as Mr. Ferrer reiterated his goal to invest heavily in schools, both he and Ms. Weingarten acknowledged that his cornerstone proposal, raising teachers' salaries by 30 percent at the cost of at least $1 billion a year, would not be achieved anytime soon.

Ms. Weingarten even suggested that Mr. Ferrer's 30 percent figure, which he has discussed repeatedly and insistently since January, had been more a symbol than a concrete goal. She said that she had chastised Mr. Ferrer for proposing such a specific salary increase when he first did so in January, but that Mr. Ferrer had assured her that he was only trying to make a point.

"What he said to me initially, privately, was, `What I was doing was making sure people knew how important it was, and if I didn't put a number out there that was very big, people wouldn't understand how important it was,' " she said.

Ms. Weingarten said that both Mr. Ferrer and Mr. Green, his opponent in the Democratic runoff, had assured the union's delegate assembly on Thursday that they would not abandon their major education proposals. But Mr. Green, the city's public advocate, failed to persuade the delegates in attendance that he had "walked in their shoes," Ms. Weingarten said. For example, she said, Mr. Green emphasized his plan to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, which would not affect the tens of thousands of members who teach older children.

Ms. Weingarten said that many teachers were also reluctant to endorse Mr. Green because he had agreed to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's proposal to remain in office for three more months. The union loathes Mr. Giuliani because he has harshly criticized teachers throughout his tenure and has refused to meet their demands for a raise of at least 20 percent. Unlike Mr. Green, Mr. Ferrer refused to support the mayor's request.

Besides sharply raising the starting teacher's salary of $31,910, Mr. Ferrer has promised to keep all the city's 200 middle schools open until 6 p.m. on weekdays and create weekend programs for middle-school students. To cover the estimated $100 million annual cost, Mr. Ferrer would reinstate part of the surcharge of the personal income tax.

Mr. Ferrer's spokesman, John Del Cecato, said yesterday that Mr. Ferrer was still "completely committed" to raising taxes to finance his after-school proposal. But he said that Mr. Ferrer would be more insistent that the state meet a court order to sharply increase aid to New York City schools. Gov. George E. Pataki has appealed the court decision, which would increase state education aid by at least $1 billion.

Mr. Green had long rankled the teachers' union by putting the reduction of class sizes at the top of his education agenda, a strategy that the union saw as a distraction from the goal of steep raises for teachers. While his spokesman said yesterday that Mr. Green still embraced both goals, he made clear that smaller classes remained the top priority.

"Along with rebuilding the city, reducing class size remains for him a No. 1 priority," the spokesman, Joe DePlasco, said. Asked about increasing teachers' salaries, Mr. DePlasco said that Mr. Green was still committed to doing so, but that the police also needed a raise.